Example playthrough
Taken directly from the book "Your First Steps" by Athlon M. Topia II

     When a person first logs into the game I'd like them to be greeted by an amazing CGI intro. It should show males and females of each race, like as the camera floats past them, each being looks up at the camera and nods or something, a quick flyby of the MonZa Blackship, a random ship using a Terran Ramp to launch itself into hyperspace, then the GCN Supercomputer/Moon, the camera moves quickly to it and the screen fades to the character builder screen.

     Choose your race (should show a small picture of each race, both male and female. Clicking on a race gives you a brief summary of that race including it's special abilities and the bonuses to stats.

Human, Male "Reverse Engineering" Average stats
Name = Distillery

     Players should be able to use a slider to change their body shapes, IE height and weight. I would like a muscle slider to change how buff the character appears or if they might have a belly. Possibly a breast slider, while I know little boys will abuse it, I think being able to make a character exactly the way you want, or as close to it, including breast size, muscle size whatever, is the fastest way to make a person connect to their character.

5ft 10in
195 lbs
Small spare tire, light build

     Next there should be DOZENS of possible hair styles for each race (if they have hair, for some races, like the Saurians, different spikes and frills) The Cerian race will obviously have no hair, here is where you'd design their helmet. Most likely the basic head shape, the eyes, and facial options. Facial hair would go here as well.

Bald
Scragly

     Next would come generating your ancestors, which will add pros and cons to your character. This could mean bonus starting equipment, better or worse stats, more or less money, enemies, friends, and extra missions. (This is subject to modification.) It doesn't make any difference if you're a bloodline descendant or not.

Roll 1 = Ancestor "ColdHeart" was subject to partial cybernetic reconstruction. Because cybertechnology wasn't very advanced it caused birth defects in later generations. He was also a war hero and highly decorated.
-1 Endurance (bad cyber technology screwed up the gene pool)

Roll 2 = ColdHeart's son, "Lewis" was a succesful software developer. Before his death every computer on Earth had at least one program he had written installed on it.
+1 Intelligence (passed along his awesome braininess)
-1 Strength (also passed along the fact he sat on his butt a lot)
+500 credits (small stipend since he was so friggin' rich)

Roll 3 = Lewis died tragically when he was hit by a drunk driver. Although he never had kids of his own, he claimed many as his own. His charitable contributions inspired one soul to greatness. "Shi Sung" rose from poverty to become one of the greatest civil rights lawyers in history. Her charismatic speeches have been translated and rebroadcast into every known language for over a 100 years. Even today she inspires greatness.
+1 Charisma (she was a very likable person)
+1 Fast talk (she could talk a nuke out of detonating)

Roll 4 = Shi Sung had two children. Lewis II, and Shawn. Shawn was a failure at life. He blamed everyone else for his mistakes, never could get ahead and eventually just dissapeared. Lewis the Second took after his name sake. He was destined for greatness from birth. He was a brilliant software developer, and probably an even greater philanthropist than Lewis the First. He wasn't afraid to go above the law to get things done either. He used his vast wealth to employ mercanaries to rescue hostages, to right wrongs, and insure the guilty was punished and the innocent were rescued. He however was stricken with a neuro-muscular disease and his life was cut short.
He was your father.
+1 Intelligence (his vast intelligence was inherited)
-1 Strength (you inherited his disease, but it was cured early in your life, however, the damage was done)
+1000 credits.
A contact of your father's has kept an eye on you, he'll keep you steadily employed if you need it. (extra missions, almost always involving rescuing hostages or righting wrongs, these missions come randomly and aren't available from mission terminals)

Roll 5 = As you've grown up you've done your best to do the right thing, however no good deed goes unpunished. At age 12 you get shot by a bully you kicked the shit out of at school. He blasts you with a pulse pistol and it disintegrates your right arm. You get a cybernetic replacement. It looks obviously synthetic, but it doesn't bother you. To you, it's a badge of honor for upholding your beliefs. ((Your character in the game will appear with a cybernetic right arm, it will look metallic)) You continue to "do the right thing" until you land on ((((here you choose the starting area, Humans can choose several different locations)))) the Mon'Za moon of "Moon".
Tallies
-1 Endurance
+2 Intelligence
-2 Strength
+1 Charisma
+1 Fast Talk
+1500 credits
A mercenary contact
A cybernetic arm with a microcomputer built into it.

Final
Strength= 3
Agility= 5
Endurance= 4
Intelligence= 7
Comprehension= 5
Charisma= 6
Speed= 5
(((You can allow the computer to generate your starting skills, or pick them yourself.))) "Distillery" chose "Flightschool" and gets all the starting skills of that career. -1000 credits

Awareness= 1
Pilot Spacecraft= 1
Astrogation= 1
Communications= 1
Energy Pistol= 1 (Humans favor pulse pistols)
Spacecraft gunnery= 1
He also inherited a knack for computer programming.
Programming= 2
Starting gear
Environmental flightsuit (low armor, but better than nothing._
Pulse Pistol
A microcomputer thats built into his cybernetic arm that allows full access to the GCN.


     Distillery appears and brings up his "I"nventory screen. He equips his pistol and flightsuit. He presses the "A"bilities button and drags the "Single" shot to the 1 button, "3 shot" to the 2 button, and the "Full auto" to the 3 button. Pulse Pistols are cool like that. Not all pistols allow you that kind of freedom. As he closes his Abilities screen a Rabid Chihuahua starts knawing on his ankle, he quickly pounds the 3 button and unloads five pulse blasts into the Chihuahua. Pulse weapons have nasty effects on unarmored flesh and bone, the Chihuahua explodes leaving nothing lootable. Another one comes barreling after him, he hits the "tab" button and targets the Chihuahua and gets ready to fire, but "Kyynda", another player obliterates the mini-monstrosity with a mighty swipe of her claws. She's a MonZa Soul, a 9ft tall wall of muscle and claws.

Since MonZa souls can only speak to other MonZa (their vocal cords can't make the required sounds for other languages) she emotes a /bow.

Distillery presses "Enter" and types in Thanks

Kyynda doesn't understand any language but MonZa, so all she sees is "bLaPPy".

Distillery and Kyynda part ways as he heads towards the closest outpost so he can start some missions. As he enters the Outpost an NPC comes running up to him.

     NPC "Hey, I ain't see ya since you was a lil midget, spittin' image of ya Da tho. I's real sorry to hear of him passing, but we's be needin' ya help an I's be willin' to bet you've got that urge to right wrongs an shit just like ya Da." (the mercenary contact from character generation, he/she/it will randomly appear to offer missions, you won't always be able to complete these missions as they might require skills you don't have, but they're not mandatory by any means and they have a higher chance of netting you some better goodies than a terminal mission)
You agree
A mission automatically downloads to your "J"ournal. You hit the "J" button and your Journal opens up. You read that you have to rescue a small village from some jackasses hell bent on god knows what. The journal states that you have to head north.

You head north, killing Chihuahuas along the way. After your 10th dead dog, your pistol skill increases to 2, but because of your damned pistol you've not been able to loot a single one, no meat, no skins, nothin'!!!
You finally arrive at the village and see that it's deserted. You wonder around the village expecting something, anything to happen. You suddenly notice some tracks (Awareness skill check), you decide to follow them. You find a very solid looking door set into the side of a mountain. You notice that there is an electronic lock so you plug your mini computer into the access port. (Abilities screen, comnputer operation command) and start trying to hack the computer, but you keep getting attacked by Chihuahuas and can't focus on the hack. If you had the hacking skill this would go much faster but you don't.
About that time Kyynda wonders up.
She emotes /smile
Distillery /frown and clicks on the door and /points at it.
Kyynda /invites Distillery to join a group.
Distillery clicks Accept
Kyynda clicks on the door and hits her 3 button which is "Demolish", a successful strength check and she rips the door clean off it's hinges.
They both enter the mission instance.
Upon zoning in they're immediately set upon by several Slavers, Distillery pushes his 3 button and fires a full auto pulse blast at one Slaver, but he's wearing light body armor so it doesn't do much damage. But another advantage to using a pulse weapon is that there is a great deal of knockback when a pulse blast hits a solid object and the Slaver is knocked flat on his ass. Full Auto needs to regenerate, so he hits 2 for a three shot burst, the downed slaver is now a dead slaver. The body armor kept the pulse blasts from causing to much damage to the body of the Slaver, so at least he'll be able to loot this one.
Kyynda hits her 3 button again, and uses Demolish on the second Slaver, the attack tears the Slaver in two.
The third slaver runs but is no match for Kyynda's speed, she catches him and presses 1, which is just a basic swipe of her claws, the Slaver is dead.
Distillery got the first kill, he loots the first Slaver, he gets a damaged piece of unusable light body armor, a pulse pistol, and a "Health-IT" nano shot. (a H.O.T., or heal over time single use healing device)
Kyynda loots the second body, the armor is a total loss, but she picks up a pulse pistol which she can't use, and a vibroknife which she can't use. Her hands are to big.
Distillery loots the 3rd body but it contains a damaged vibroknife. It would be usable again if repaired, but Distillery will just sell it as vendor trash.
They move on to another room, Kyynda rushes in as a meat shield. The slavers in this room are using simple chemical pistols which do little damage to Kyynda. Distillery moves in behind and opens fire. Kyynda has the full attention of all 5 slavers in this room. She is quickly dispatching them but the slaver leader shows up and fires on Kyynda. He's using a high-powered pulse rifle, which as we know does terrible things to flesh and bone. Kyynda isn't wearing armor, normally her characters shear strength and stamina would be enough, but this pulse rifle is shredding her.
Distillery clicks her, and uses his only Health-IT on her, but since it's made to be used on Humans, it only heals a little bit, but it's enough to keep Kyynda on her feet as they both unload into the Slaver leader.
They loot the remains, but Kyynda gets the pulse rifle, it's useless to her so she opens a trade window and gives it to Distillery. He /thanks to her and immediately equips it. He remebers he doesn't have the skill to use this weapon, but the extra damage is nice, and on full auto it doesn't matter if half the shots miss or not. He redoes his attacks, now he has a "snipe" attack which grants a large accuracy bonus at long range, he no longer has a 3 round burst, but the full auto does some terrific amounts of damage.
They leave the room and see a patrol down the hall. Distillery tries to tab target one of the Slavers, but they're to far, so he manually clicks on one and hits his Snipe ability, button number 1. The character kneels, holds the rifle up to aim, and blasts the head clean off of one of the Slavers. Critical hit, the body falls to the floor, the other slaver runs towards them but Kyynda intercepts him and claw swipes him, but the attack is different. She got a hand to hand skillup in the last encounter, now the attack is a double swipe, one swipe up which lifts the slaver up, and one swipe down which slams him into the ground. They loot and move on.
The next room is guarded by 2 security robots. Not very powerful, but pulse weapons barely do squat damage against solid objects, but the knockback from full autofire, especially with a rifle is extremely useful. Distillery nails one to a wall. Everytime the robot recovers and moves forward Distillery's autofire is recharged and he unloads again and slams the robot back against the wall. Kyynda finishes off her robot, then /points and /laughs at the robot Distillery keeps bashing against the wall. The impacts against the wall eventually damage the robot enough that it falls silent. Distillery loots some damaged circuitry from one robot, while Kyynda loots an arm, but she notices it has damage stats on it, and decides to equip it. While using the arm as a club doesn't do as much damage as a double claw strike, she finds it amusing to be using an arm as a club.
The next room also contains a robot, it's quickly dispatched and Kyynda gets another arm, she equips it and is now dual wielding robot arms as clubs. Kyynda's player is very amused at beating up bad guys with someone else's fists. (Only a character with a large amount of strength would loot items like this)
The final room- Another boss Slaver, Kyynda's dual wield attacks keep the Slaver flat on his back, and the pulse blasts from Distillery's rifle shred his goons. The battle is over quickly, they loot some more damaged light body armor and release the slaves.
The entire mission lasted about an hour. Because they have spent some time grouped up together, Kyynda has started to learn a little Human. She'll never be able to speak it, but she starts to see a few words when Distillery speaks that actualy make sense. Now when he say "thanks for the help" she sees "thanks for thap habbery", if they spend some more time adventuring together she'll eventually understand him completely.

They make their way back to the Outpost, Distillery gets a small reward of 200 credits from the Merc that gave him the mission. Distillery /shouts "What can I do with armor pieces besides sell them?" Another players /shouts "An armorer can put them back together for you, I'll do it for you for free, it will help build my skill level" Distillery meets the other player and gets some basic armor reinforcements for his flight suit in trade for the damaged pieces of light armor. He sells everything else.


     An observant person may have noticed that looting is a tad different. By destroying the bodies of his kills, Distillery wasn't able to loot the Chihuahuas. If the body is so maimed, what would there be to loot? Also, by Kyyndas massive claws were capable of tearing through body armor, so anything she killed the armor was to damaged to be used. Pulse weapons can't penetrate body armor, but being hit by a sledgehammer on full auto hurts like hell, and does destabilize armor. Distillery probably would've been able to loot a functional piece of light body armor, but not with Kyynda and her claws around. All loot aquired by this team was reasonable. You're not going to get something off a corpse that it wouldn't reasonably have. Chihuahuas aren't going to carry money, robots either.

     Kyynda /points at a mission terminal. She can't access the terminal, she can't read any language except her own and generic mission terminals don't translate MonZa. (there are many pros and cons to playing a MonZa, this is one of them) Distillery grabs a mission, and Kyynda invites another player onto the team. She invites a MonZa "Mind" named Storm. They're quadrapeds and look like really big panthers. They can't use any weapons or armor,but like Kyynda are equipped with some powerful claws, and this one has a secret weapon, Telekinesis.
     Distillery's player had read up on MonZa and he knows that with this "Mind" on his team they'll be able to handle a much tougher mission. So he drops their current mission and chooses a harder one. They head off to the mission destination cutting a swath of destruction through any Chihuahua along the way.
     Because they've killed so many Chihuahuas during their play session the game generates a Boss level Chihuahua that charges them angrily for killing so many of it's pups. ((The game will react to what you do, by killing a lot of certain creatures for instance, you may encounter a stronger version of those creatures, then again, you may not))

Storm presses her 1 button and fires a TK bolt.

Kyynda charges the beasty and acts as the meat shield, she draws it's attention and turns the beasty away from the rest of the group. Bashing away with the dual wield robotic arms.

Distillery is to close for the Snipe attack, but unloads with full auto, and gradually backs up inbetween full auto recharges so he can eventually use the snipe ability.

Storm moves in closer as she's exhausted her psy pool, it will regenerate slowly, but for now she moves in to get up close and personal. She pressed 2 and does her "pounce" attack. The animation shows her character jumping on the beasts back and chomping down, then falling off, the attack is a failure, she does a little damage, but if the attack had succeeded, she would've locked onto the beasts back and done some steady damage over time and then used her claw swipe attack to compound the damage.

Distillery is in range now for his snipe attack, it misses disgracefully because he has little,,, meaning no skill in Energy rifle.

Distillery lands a full auto hit on the beast and does a great deal of damage, that attracts the beasts attention and it goes barreling after him. Kyynda chases after trying to get the beasts attention again.

Storm has regenerated her psy power now, and notices her psy skill went up a level and sees she got a new ability. Wall of Force, she uses this power and it knocks the beast off it's feat.

Distillery has stopped attacking so Kyynda can regain control of the beast. She unequips the arms so she can do more damage to the beast. By switching back to hand to hand she quickly regains the beasts attention. She wasn't skilled in melee, so she missed a lot, but with her claws,,,,,, that's a different story.

Distillery has moved back into range for a snipe at about the same time it's recharged. He fires again and scores a hit. It's by no means an earth shattering attack, but it finishes the beast. He's now used a pulse rifle enough to get the skill. He's at Energy Rifle 0, He won't suffer anywhere near the penalties to accuracy that he was before. By having a Zero level in a skill, it means he won't score any devestating critical failures. He was lucky that he hadn't done so in by using a weapon he wasn't skilled in. He could've lost the weapon completely do to a malfunction, or even shot one of his own team mates.

Distillery loots a damaged shoe out of the beasts stomach, thats all any of them get. If any of them had the skinning skill they could skin it for hides and/or butcher it for meat.

A server message pops up "We apologize for the inconvienence, but the Chihuahuas are revolting and we need to apply a hotfix. The server will be coming down in 5 minutes."

Distillery /bows to Kyynda and Storm and /thanks them both and logs off.

This is a very basic and generic playthrough, this is how I see things. I'll flesh this out more later on.


---continued, because I like to write, even though I'm not any good at it---

Several weeks have passed since Distillery and Kyynda started playing together. They've started a guild called "FOAD", which is short for something they don't want the moderators to know about, so nobody in the guild is ever told what it means. They don't have many members, but they are for the most part, tight.

Guild Leader- "Distillery" is now a "Gunfighter", he has raised his E-Pistol skill to 8 which earned him that title. He dual wields "Shake & Bake" pistols, which are a dual barrel over/under Hi-Energy/Pulse pistol. The beams can't be fired at the same time, but can be switched back and forth on the fly. The weapons are energy hogs which requires a special power cell that Distillery wears on his back, and they're heavy so he loses a little "draw" speed that a being would normally get with pistols, but they're dangerous. He has also been working on his First Aid skill because the guild can't find anyone that wants to play a dedicated healer.

Co-Leader "Kyynda" is now a "Swordsman", one day she saw a sword that was as tall as she was and it was love at first sight. Only a MonZa with her level of strength is even capable of hefting the beast, and she powered her way to skill level 9. (((Note, I see this character dragging this weapon behind her as she walks, not sheathed.))) Kyynda is the "Tank" for the group, couple with Virtual Armor and Storm's TK abilities not much hurts her.

"Storm" opted out of a leadership role. She has now reached TK level 5, and Pyro level 2. Storm doesn't play much, but she's good people when she can play.

"Budlight", is a Cerian "Heavy Armsman". He specializes in big guns, the bigger, the better. He mainly relies on his Bio-armors' supplied particle cannon, but also carries a hi-tech version of a mini-gun. He tends to laugh pretty maniacly when firing it into a group of enemies. Since he's a Cerian, he also has to have a crafting skill, so he specializes in Armor Engineering. He has supplied the guild with "Virtual Armor".((( make this a link to an equipment list if I ever get around to making one))) Virtual Armor is a series of small lower energy shaped force field emitters that when active, looks like glowing body armor. Virtual Armor generally only covers a small portion of the body and doesn't stay active for long, but it's powerful when the chips are down and suddenly the armor lights up and saves your bacon.

"Hacked" is a Saurian "Hacker". The player, after reading about there being an actual "realm" in cyberspace decided from the get go he wanted to play a hacker. "Hacked" has been very useful, he's got "Haggle" and "fast talk" skills which get the team better payouts form mission terminals, he can bypass most locks with ease, and if all else fails, he can do something a little less than legal and hack into some random NPCs credit account and siphon off some funds. He's also working on his "Trader" skill, which if the group ever manages to get a ship, combined with Distillery's piloting skills, hope to make some bank trading commodities offworld. He favors Plasma SMGs, but only has an E-SMG skill of 4.

     Because of "Race Relations", the team is finding it hard to get good missions. Saurians and Cerians aren't generally allowed on Terran worlds, Cerians aren't allowed on MonZa worlds, only Cerians are allowed on Cerian space stations, can the current heading of galactic politics doesn't make it look any easier in the future.
     So for now the team boards a shuttle to Saurian space where the laws are a bit more lax, and if someone doesn't like the cut of your jib you can always just,,,, shoot them, or bribe them, just sneak past them.

The Team gets a mission to hunt down a rogue saurian pirate. Saurians generally follow a very strict "Code", and if they don't follow it, well, let's just say some of the best pirate hunters in the verse are also Saurians. But sometimes they outsource to anyone eager, or stupid enough to take a hunting mission. The team is tasked with taking out a small safe haven, they're shuttled to their destination (( I see, the team getting boarding a shuttle to head to the mission, an animation pops up of the ship delivering them to their destination, the ship fires a few shots at the base, and drops the team off in drop pods during the commotion. I picture animations like this popping up during certain mission types, they would be relatively fast animations, and can be toggled off and on.)))